Fraley Field sits in the southwest corner of the Shiloh battlefield. It is the spot where the Shiloh battle started and was honestly a favorite stop on the battlefield tour for me. I’m not sure if it was because the wife and I endured trampling through a mud pit to reach the field, or if it was just the sure openness of the place, but for some reason I remember vividly how the field looked and how I felt as we approached it.

Col. Everett Peabody, who was the commander of the Sixth Division, of the First Brigade, of the Army of the Tennessee had a distinct feeling the morning of April 6th, 1862, that something wasn’t right. There were reports coming back from many of his pickets, some members of 12th Michigan, who were out on patrol, that they had detected confederates in the nearby woods, and he decided to act. He sent out a Union Patrol that morning, which was led by Col. James E. Powell, to investigate the situation, and as they entered Fraley Field they encountered Confederate pickets who were leading several waves of men from the Army of the Mississippi’s Third Army Corps.

The pickets were up on the high ground, that you see in the picture to your right, and noticed the Union patrol directly in front of them. Three shots rang out and the Battle of Shiloh began. The fighting in Fraley Field only lasted about an hour and resulted in the Union patrol retreating. It also served to alert the rest of the Union army that the confederates were definitely on their way.

Although not a major factor in the outcome of the Shiloh battle, Fraley Field still is a point of interest, because of it being the place where the Union army first realized that the Confederate army was indeed on its way. After hours of different Union pickets reporting back to their commanders that they knew confederates were nearby, and after many a commander refusing to take action because they believed they were only confederate recon patrols, Fraley Field was the location where finally the commanders of the Union army knew that an attack was indeed a real prospect.

Fraley Field was thee spot, where all of the bloodshed that was to become Shiloh, started, and to stand in the field and try to imagine what it felt like to realize that the entire Confederate army was on its way is amazing. I can only imagine what those men from the Union Patrol felt like. I can’t imagine what the Confederate pickets felt like either. To know that they would be the first ones to fire shots on that fateful day must’ve been incredible and incredibly frightening all at the same time. To be the lead line in the charge must have been extremely nerve wracking to say the least.

And to know that what those men felt in that field, was only the beginning of what many men would feel, in a somber two days near the Shiloh church.

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